by Hank Davis
“I just put down what you gave me,” I said.
“Yeah, sure, Ruxt. But I didn’t realize, nobody realized, how bad the figures were till they were all together and written up. Look, this report shows that we shouldn’t Terraform this planet—that we can’t make a nudnick on the slavery proposition—and that maybe we shouldn’t have even invaded this inferno at all.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do . . .” The Senior Trontar had regained his normal nasty disposition. “You’re going to redo this report. You’re going to redo it starting now, you’re going to work on it all night, and you’re going to have it on my desk and in perfect shape when I come in in the morning, or, by Haldor, the next thing you write will be your transfer to the space-freighter run nearest the Slug Galaxy.” The Senior Trontar ran momentarily out of breath. “And,” he came back strongly, “you won’t be going as no Trontar, neither!”
“It’ll be on your desk in the morning, Sir,” I said.
Deck hands on the space-freighter run were, I’d heard, particularly expendable.
By the middle of the third watch I had completed a perfect copy of the report complete with attachments, appendices, and supplements. And also by this time I knew from the differences between the original report and this jawboned version that someone had goofed badly in undertaking this invasion, and then had goofed worse in not calling the thing off. Now there was to be considerable covering-up of tracks. The thought suddenly came to me that a guard’s Trontar named Ruxt knew rather a lot of what had gone on. Following that mildly worrying thought came a notion that perhaps a guard’s Trontar named Ruxt might be considered by some as just another set of tracks to be covered up. That far-off retirement on a small but steady income became even more unlikely, and the possibilities began to appear of a quick end in the Slug-shattered hulk of a space freighter.
Had the Senior Trontar changed in his attitude toward me, toward the end of the day, perhaps acted as though I were a condemned man? Possibly. And had some of the officers been whispering about me late in the afternoon? Could have been.
Shaken, I wandered down to the mess hall and joined a group of third-watch guards, who were goofing off while their Trontar was checking more distant guard posts.
“It’s easy,” one of them was telling the others. “All you got to do is to slip some surgeon/replacer a few big notes and he gives you this operation which makes you look like a native. And then you just settle down on Astarte for the rest of your life with the women just begging you to let them support you.”
“You mean you’d rather live on some lousy federated world than be a Haldorian in the Invasion Forces?” There was a strong sardonic note in the questioner’s voice.
“Man, you ever been on Astarte?” the first man asked incredulously.
“Yeah, but how are you going to be sure that the surgeon/replacer doesn’t turn you in?” objected one of the others. “He could take your money, do the operation, and have you picked up. That way he’d have the money and get a medal too.”
“I’d get around that,” the talky guy said, “I’d just—”
At this point he was jabbed in the arm by one of his buddies who had noticed my eavesdropping. The man shut up. All four of them drifted off to their posts.
I went reluctantly back to the office. From then till dawn I dreamed up and rehearsed all manner of wild schemes to take me out of this dangerous situation. Or was it all perhaps just imagination? A Haldorian Trontar should never be guilty of an excess of that quality. But I made sure when the Senior Trontar sneaked in a bit before the regular opening time, that I was just, apparently, completing the last page of the report. The impression I hoped to convey was that I had spent the entire night in working and worrying.
“It’s okay,” the Senior Trontar growled after he had studied the completed report. “Guess you can take a couple of days off, Ruxt. I believe in taking care of my men. Say,” he asked casually, “I suppose you didn’t understand those figures you were working up, did you?”
“No,” I said, “I didn’t pay any attention to them; they were just something to copy, that’s all.” I felt confident that I could outfence the Senior Trontar any time at this little game, but what had he and the Adjutant been whispering about before they had come in?
“But you used to be a statistician, didn’t you?” He looked at the far corner of the room and smiled slightly. “But you take a couple days off, Ruxt. Maybe we’ll find something good for you when you come back.” He smiled again. “Don’t forget to check out with the Locator before you go, though. We don’t want to lose you.”
I stumbled home, not even noticing the hate-filled glances my armor and blue skin drew from the natives along the streets. The glances were standard, but this feeling of being doomed was new.
They were going to get me. I felt sure of that, even though my Sike Test Scores had always been as low as any normal’s. But how could a Haldorian disappear on this planet? Aside from skin color, there was the need to keep body temperatures at a livable level. The body armor unit was good only for about a week. Find a surgeon/replacer and bribe him to change me to an Earthman? I saw now how ridiculous such an idea was. But was there nothing but to wait passively while the Senior Trontar and the Adjutant, and whoever else did the dirty work, all got together and railroaded me off?
Haldorians, though, never surrender—or so the Mil-Prop lad would have us believe. Right from the time you are four years old and you start seeing the legendary founders of Haldoria—Bordt and Smordt—fighting off the fierce six-legged carnivores, you are told never to give up. “Where there’s Haldor, there’s Hope!” “There’s always another stone for the wolves, if you but look.” I must confess I’d snickered (way deep inside, naturally) at these exhortations ever since I’d reached the age of thinking, but now all these childhood admonitions came rushing back to give me strength, quite as they were intended to do. I found that I could but go down like any Haldorian, fighting to the last.
IV
So I put on my dress uniform the next day, and made sure that nothing could be deader than the dulled bits, or brighter than the polished ones. A bit of this effort was wasted since I arrived at Headquarters looking something less than sharp. The cooling unit in my armor was acting up a bit; and, also, three Terran city guerillas had tried to ambush me on the way. You take quite a jolt from a land mine, even with armor set on maximum. Some of those people never knew when they were licked. No wonder their Spanglt Resistance Quotient was close to the highest on record.
I got through the three lines of guards and protective force fields all right, checking my rayer here, my armor there—the usual dull procedure. By the time I reached the Admissions Officer, I was down to uniform and medals.
“You want to see the Accountant?” the Admissions Officer asked incredulously. “You mean one of his staff! Well, where’s your request slip, Trontar?”
“I’ve come on my own, Sir,” I said, “not from my office, so I haven’t a request slip.”
“Come on your own? What’s your unit? Give me your ID card!”
Let’s see, I thought. I’ve abstracted classified material from the files and carried it outside the office, I’ve broken the chain of command and communication, and, worst of all, I’d tried to see a senior officer without a request slip. Yeah, maybe I’d be lucky to end up as a live deckhand on a space freighter.
A bored young Zankor with the rarely seen balance insignia of the Accountant’s Office rose from behind the Admissions Officer.
“I’ll take responsibility for this man,” he said casually to the A.O. “Follow me, Trontar. I was wondering when you’d turn up.”
“Me?”
“Well, someone like you. Though usually it’s scared sub-clerks that we drag up. And that reminds me.” He turned to another young and equally bored Zankor standing nearby. “Take over, Smit, will you? They’re bringing in that sub-clerk who’s been writing those a
nonymous letters. I’ve reserved the Inquisition Room for a couple of hours for him.”
I followed the Zankor as he strode away, wondering as I did if they had more than one Inquisition Room.
He led me into a small room just off the corridor and motioned me to a chair. “Before you see the Accountant, Trontar,” he said, “I’ll have to screen what you have. It may be that we won’t have to bother the Accountant at all.”
The smooth way the Zankor talked and his friendly manner almost convinced me that we should both put the interests of the Accountant first. But then it occurred to me that a man with the gold knot of a Zankor on his collar wasn’t often friendly with a mere Trontar. That thought snapped me out of it and I knew I should only give the minimums.
“I’ve got documents,” I said—“document” is such a lovely strong word, “which prove that the official report on the invasion and occupation of this planet is false.” That, I thought, was as minimum as one could get.
“Ah, and have you?” The Zankor still looked bored. “Well, let’s see them, Trontar,” he said briskly.
The Zankor had that sincere look the upper class always uses when they are about to do you dirt. They blush that heavy shade of blue, almost purple, and they look you straight in the eye, and they quiver a bit as to voice . . . and the next thing you know, you’re shafted.
“I’m sorry, Sir,” I said, “but what I have is so important that I can give it to the Accountant only.”
He stared at me for rather a long moment, pondering, no doubt, the pleasures of witnessing a full-dress military flogging. Then he shrugged and picked up the speaker beside him. He didn’t call the Trontar of the Guard to come and take my documents by force. I could tell that even though he spoke in High Haldorian, that harsh language the upper class are so proud of preserving as a relic from the days of the early conquerors. No, he was speaking to a superior—there’s never any doubt as to who is on top when people are speaking High Haldorian—and then I caught the emphatic negative connected with the present-day Haldorian phrases meaning Phase II and Phase III, Terraforming. So even though I don’t know High Haldorian, and would never be so incautious as to admit it if I did, I knew roughly what had been said.
And I was frantically revising my plans.
“Follow me,” the Zankor said, after completing the call. “We’ll see the Accountant now, and—” he looked at me sincerely—“you’d better have something very good indeed. You really had, Trontar.”
The Accountant turned out to be a tall and thin Full Marshall, the first I’d seen. He was dressed in a uniform subtly different from the regulation, and he wore only one tiny ribbon, which I didn’t recognize. He had the slightly deeper-blue skin you often see on the upper classes, though this impression may have been due to the green furnishings of the room. It was, in fact, called the Green Room, when the Terrans had used it as one of their regional capitals.
I saluted the Accountant with my best salute, the kind you lift like it was sugar and drop as if it were the other. The Accountant responded with one of those negligent waves that tell you the saluter was a survivor of the best and bloodiest private military school in existence.
“Proceed, Trontar,” the Accountant said, leaning back and relaxing as if he didn’t have a care in the universe.
I launched into my speech, the one I’d been mentally rehearsing. I told him I knew I was breaking the chain of communication, but that I was doing it for the service and for Haldoria, etc. Any old serviceman knows the routine. I was, as I ran through this speech, just as sincere and just as earnestly interested in the good of Haldoria as any Haldorian combat Trontar could be. But, deep inside me, the old Ameet Ruxt was both marveling at the change in himself and cynically appreciating the performance.
The Accountant interrupted the performance about halfway through. “Yes, yes, Trontar,” he said brusquely, “I think we can assume your action is for the good of Haldoria, may the Empire increase and the Emperor live forever. Yes. But you say you have material dealing with the overall report on our invasion and occupation of this planet. You further say this material shows discrepancies in the official report—which you imply you have seen.”
“Yes, Sir,” I said, and I handed over the several sheets of paper which comprised the old report and the changes of the new. Meanwhile, behind me, the Zankor was invisible but I had not a doubt but that he was there, keeping the regulation distance from me.
These people knew their business.
The Accountant took the collection of papers and compared them with some others he had on his desk. I continued to stand at Full Brace. Once you’ve been chewed out for slipping into an Ease position without being so ordered, you never forget.
The Accountant laid down the papers, scanned my face, got up and walked to the far end of the room. In front of a mirror he stopped and fingered that one small ribbon, quite, I thought, as if he were matching it with another one.
He came back quickly and sat down again. “Zankor,” he said, “set up a meeting with the top brass for this afternoon. I’ll talk with the Trontar privately.”
The Zankor saluted and was on his way out the door when the Accountant spoke again. “And Zankor . . .”
“Yes, Sir?”
“I should be very unhappy if the top brass here—the present top brass—found out about this material the Trontar brought.”
The Zankor swallowed hard and assured the Accountant that he understood . . . “Sir.”
Then we were alone and the Accountant was suddenly a kindly old man who invited me to sit down and relax. I did. I really let go and stretched out, I forgot everything I’d ever been taught as a child or had learned on my climb to the status of Trontar. I relaxed and he had me.
I had been caught on the standard Haldorian Soft/Hard Tactic.
“Disabuse your mind, Trontar,” the Accountant snapped, and he was no longer a kindly old man but a thin-lipped Haldorian snapper, “of any idea that you have saved the Empire—or any such nonsense!” Having cracked his verbal whip about my shoulders he just crouched there, glaring at me, his mouth entirely vanished and his eyes—well, I’d just as soon not think about some things.
Yes, and then he gave me the Shout/Silence treatment, the whole thing so masterfully timed that at the end he could have signed me on as a permanent latrine keeper on a spy satellite in the Slug Galaxy. A genius, that man was. The sort of man who could—and probably did—control forty wives without a weapon.
“Your information, as it happens,” he said after I had regained my senses, “checks with other data I’ve received. It might be, of course, that the whole thing is a fabrication of my enemies. In that case, Trontar—” he looked at me earnestly—“you can be assured you’ll not be around to rejoice at or to profit from my downfall.”
“Of course, Sir,” I said, quite as earnestly as he.
“But we both know that you are only a genuine patriot,” he said with a hearty chuckle, a chuckle exactly like that of a Father Goodness—that kindly old godfather who brings such nice presents to every Haldorian child until they are six, and who on that last exciting visit brings, and enthusiastically uses, a bundle of large and heavy whips to demonstrate that no one can be trusted. Efficient teachers, the Haldorians.
“Just a genuine patriot,” the Accountant repeated, “who has rendered a considerable service to the Empire. Trontar,” he said, all friendly and intimate, “the Empire likes to reward well its faithful sons. What would you most like to have or to do?”
“To serve Haldoria, Sir!” I was back on my mental feet at last.
He dropped his act then. He was, I think, just practicing anyway. We had a short talk then, the kind in which one person is quickly and efficiently pumped of everything he knows. After about ten minutes of question and answers, the Accountant leaned back and studied my face carefully.
“Have you considered Officers’ Selection Course, Trontar? I might be able to help you a little in getting in.”
Office
rs’ Selection Course was, I knew, Basic Fighter Course multiplied in length and casualties. Less than twenty per cent graduate . . . or escape.
“No, Sir,” I said. “I wondered if I mightn’t be of more value to Haldoria in some way other than being in the combat services.” So now I’d said it, and there was nothing to do but to go on. “Perhaps,” I ventured, “I might be of some help in the administrative services.”
The Accountant said nothing, his face was immobile, his hands still. He’d learned his lessons well, once.
“In fact,” I said, deciding to go for broke, “with my knowledge of the language and the customs here, I might be of most service to Haldoria right here on this planet,”
“Had you guessed, by any chance, Trontar,” the Accountant’s voice was neutrally soft, “that we won’t be Terraforming this world? And that we may not even exploit the slavery proposition?”
“I thought both those possibilities likely,” I admitted.
“But you know that in such a case we would have no administrative services on this world? Thus you are, in fact, asking for a position that wouldn’t exist.” The Accountant, without a change of position or expression, somehow gave the impression of looming over me.
“I thought,” I said, trying to pick exactly the right words, and at the same time all too conscious of a twitching muscle in my left eyelid, “that there might be an analogous position, even so.”
The Accountant loomed higher.
“If only,” he said, “you hadn’t come to us, Trontar. I mean that you, in effect, sold your associates out to me. And I hold that once a seller, always a seller. If I could be certain that you are and will be perfectly loyal to the Haldorian Way . . .”